Nigeria’s economy ran into recession because its managers shut the door on the world —Olawepo-Hashim

Mr Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim was the Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at its inception. He has since launched fully into business, emerging the chairman, Bresson AS, an independent power producing company, and some oil and gas concerns. Last week, his name came up as one of the presidential hopefuls of the Middle Belt Forum. In this interview, he speaks on the state of the economy, the need for restructuring, among other issues. Group Politics Editor, TAIWO ADISA, presents excerpts.

You recently gave a lecture at the Obafemi Awolowo University where you gave some reasons Nigeria’s economy found itself in a recession in 2016. Why do you think the narrative by the current government is untenable?

If you look at the growth that Nigeria witnessed around 2013, the economic boost was about $510 billion, with which we overtook South Africa. Most of those things that led to growth were small things. Some of this projection comes from the fact that Nigerians are hardworking people; we have a big market and very creative and imaginative middle class that is creating value in the economy.

The sectors that really accounted for the growth in GDP are telecoms, ICT and banking services. The prediction that by 2050, Nigeria will be one of the largest economies is not misplaced if you look at the talents of the people, enterprise and size of the Nigerian market. All we need to do is get some things right that are mainly administrative for this economy to get the desired result. The drivers of economic growth are industry and talent of the people, their entrepreneurship. Anything that will hinder that should be removed; anything that can support that should be embraced. When you look at the size of the market which is very attractive, we have a very good Diaspora community that is contributing significantly to financing the country.

 

But the government of President Muhammadu Buhari has said the recession was caused by mismanagement of the past. In your view what really caused the recession of 2016?

The most important reason the economy went into recession was not because of corruption. Even with corruption, the Naira was still exchanged around N198 to a dollar. I think previous governments supposed to have enacted policies that would allow the market to determine the value of the currency. Business people were expected to have carried out their businesses without political blackmail. I think the fiddling with the value of the currency had more impact in the disaster rather than corruption.

We had a situation where the economy was internally dry on liquidity. In one hand, the Federal Government was contradicting CBN on the management of foreign exchange, while the CBN was doing some interesting measure to stabilise the Naira by allowing the market to determine the value. The Federal Government always made contradictory statements and the investors panicked and withheld their funds. This had impacts on the economy. When the government came with instruction about the limit of amount you can operate with your foreign account, even those remittances were not coming like before.

This corruption talk as far as I am concerned is neither here nor there. Corruption is not good for any economy, but corruption itself is a consequence of a centralised system. Any system where you have monopoly offering one service or the other, there will be corruption. Look at the transformation in the communication industry.

 

But Buhari’s anti-corruption drive appears to be biting?

You can deal and achieve more with policy in dealing with corruption. People who want to fight corruption cannot at the same time be promoting a centralised system, because a centralised system by its nature encourages corruption. If every Nigerian businessman or woman has to go to a certain person in Abuja and they have to wait three to four years for one person to sign a document before that document can be passed, then it is difficult to expunge corruption from that system.

Nigeria during Obasanjo’s administration made more progress in the fight against corruption than I have seen in this present administration. EFCC, ICPC were created, but this APC government has not been able to appoint substantive chairmen for those agencies. Assuming that they have to create those agencies, would they have been able to achieve that. It was during Obasanjo that a serving minister was put on trial; it was under that government that the Inspector General of Police was handcuffed and dragged by policemen under him on national television. That IGP happened to have come from the same zone with the then sitting president. What do you have now? It is clearance for officers indicted for corruption.

We need to get serious and not reduce this thing to a joke; it is good to punish those who break the law. Why they took Obasanjo serious in his anti-corruption fight was because he was straight forward. People said it was political witch-hunt but no AD member was sent to prison. No single ANPP member was sent to prison. People that were sent to prison were PDP members. Under Obasanjo two serving governors were impeached and put on trial.

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Why do you think restructuring the country is a recurring issue?

Restructuring brings fear into the mind of certain people. If you want to make progress you need to get the desired national consensus on how to move forward in power sharing which is a core issue. One thing that everybody agrees on is that an over-centralised government is unsustainable, whether from the North or South, for efficiency and productivity in the system. We have different minorities who want to have their own states. What the minority is after is how you decentralise power to the state and I believe we will have more efficiency and people will be richer. For instance, a state like Zamfara will be richer if they don’t have to come go Abuja to licence investors who want to invest in gold and solid minerals, and the GDP of the country will expand and more tax will be collected as a result of that expansion.

In Nigeria, public office holders hold meetings till 1:00 am because they get concerned with little things that would have been carried out at state levels. It is this kind of waste and unnecessary bureaucracy that I think devolution of power will achieve and everybody can relate to that irrespective of region. We need to develop a language of consensus that everybody can buy into.

 

 You recently got shortlisted among the four presidential hopefuls from the Middle Belt, going by what people know about you as a political activist, starting from student union days. But it looks like you might be popular among the elite, I doubt if your name rings a bell within the grassroots community. Do you think ordinary Nigerians are ready for a new face or fresh voice?

Interestingly, the result of the opinion poll that we had suggests to the contrary because we are running a scientific intervention. Four months ago, we did an opinion poll in some South West states and the Middle Belt and we are still compiling that of the North West and North East. The result was then if elections were to hold that time, only 5 per cent of the electorate in Lagos would vote Buhari and less than three per cent would vote Atiku. Majority of the respondents said they never wanted any of these. They are looking for a new credible candidate.

 

Was it not manipulated?

You see, all of us have to wake up, including you. I think we have been so complacent that we are not alive to the changes currently happening in the polity. We are talking about how things change very fast and not just in Nigeria, in the world over, everywhere. How did Macron win? That was unthinkable. If there are people who are committed to established political platform, they are the Europeans. They follow parties that have been in existent for hundred, two hundred years; extremely conservative. You have family parties. They are even more conservative than us here when it comes to taking political decisions because they are very ideological and very cultural. But what happened? The way information is presented now and the way it affects public consciousness is so dynamic and fast.

When we were student union leaders, we used to print handbills and posters and circulate them. The security agencies would seize them and they would attack the press. But that is not possible again. All the information is available in one second; everybody has it. This is what has created the fluidity in the political space that does not make it to be as traditional as you will want to define.